by J. A. Kerley
Kubiac stared at the soft olive-colored hand touching his and swallowed hard. “Uh, just like two weeks, maybe a little more.”
Maruyama’s hands rose in surprise. “You talk like you’ve known her forever. How’d you meet?”
“I was at a coffee shop over on Washington and she sat down beside me. She wanted me to show her how to game. Now we live together.”
Maruyama clapped her hands. “Love at first sight.”
Kubiac pushed back a shock of dark hair to reveal a frown. “I dunno, not really love, I guess. More like we have a thing. She’s real, like, strong and is helping me through some things.” He blew out a breath. “I-uh d-didn’t tell you something. M-my f-father died about three weeks ago.”
“Oh, Adam, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. He was a piece of shit like I said. I just didn’t tell you he died.”
“Then that’s what I’m sorry about, Adam. That your father was a bad person.”
Kubiac leaned closer to Maruyama. “You said your father called you a freak. Mine called me a freak, too. Real fathers don’t do that. He also said I was weak … like yours did.”
Maruyama pushed away her plate and lowered her voice. “Mine died, too, Adam. Two years ago. A vein exploded in his brain. He was a lawyer, an important one right here in Phoenix. My father was a very good lawyer but a very bad person. You want to know what he did in his will?”
“What?”
“Left me $250,000 …”
“That’s not so bad,” Kubiac grunted. “Mine left—”
“… and $5,500,000 to his girlfriend,” Maruyama completed. “Twenty-two times what I got.”
Kubiac stared, shook his head. “So you got screwed.”
A broken smile. “No, the girlfriend got screwed. About three times a day. That’s probably why his will gave most of his inheritance to her.”
“Jeez, it must have been awful to lose all that money, Cat.”
Maruyama watched a bus glide past with something in her eyes Kubiac had never seen. Anger?
“I didn’t lose the money,” she whispered like Adam wasn’t there. “I got every penny.”
“No way.”
“It was my money, Adam. Not that … bitch’s, pardon me for the word. That’s the only reason she was screwing Daddy.”
“How did you get the money?”
A flash of fear in Maruyama’s eyes; the look of someone who’s gone ten words too far. “I c-can’t say, Adam. I just realized I shouldn’t have told you that.” She looked away, then back. “I’m sorry, Adam. I lied. I didn’t get any more money. I was just saying it to make myself feel important.”
“You were telling me the truth. You got your money. I can tell.”
Maruyama stared at her hands, clutching the edge of the table. “I’m s-sorry, Adam. I wuh-was just wishful thinking. I didn’t get th-th-the money. I’m suh-sorry I m-m-misled you.”
Kubiac scooted his chair to sit beside Maruyama. “You did, you did, you DID. You need to tell me what you did to get all of your money, Cat. It’s important.”
Maruyama stood and grabbed her purse from the table. “I’m suh-sorry, Adam. I have to g-go.”
“Cat!”
But she was on her bike and moving away. Kubiac stared into his tea for ten minutes – horrible tasting stuff – then drove to Maruyama’s apartment. Either she wasn’t inside or not answering the door.
He went home, his mind a jumble of questions. Zoe was still in bed, snoring like a chainsaw. He tried to call Cat several more times, but all calls went to her voicemail.
“This is Cat Maruyama, please leave a message …”
* * *
The days in Phoenix always began with a pinkish cast to my small, neat bedroom, as if the air was slowly donning its daytime garb. Within minutes, a shimmering blue would be added, minutes later the color orange began lighting my white curtains. It always drew me from bed because I wanted to see the eastern sky, the glowing pastels sifting through wisps of purpled cloud.
I needed a bit of beauty before a day of facing horror.
Today had been no different and I had taken a run before returning to call Novarro. She had wanted to meet at HQ, to again stare at the photos and data and try to shake a sense of order from the disorder that lay in all directions.
When I arrived she was pinning a blown-up version of the last shot from Darnell Mashburn’s phone to the board centered by the headshot of Leslie Meridien and Bradford Shackleton. In the lower right-hand corner I’d tacked shots of Angela Bowers and Professor Warbley.
“When’d you get the blow-up?” I asked.
“Last night. Since we couldn’t have a steak dinner, I ate from the machine and pestered a night tech in forensics to enlarge and enhance the shot.”
“Ate from the machine?”
“The dispenser on the first floor. Cheese-and-crackers, pretzels, a glob of sugar and chemicals masquerading as a cookie. It wasn’t a steak and trimmings, but what’s a busy girl to do?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m just yanking your chain. You had to call your girlfriend, right? I hope she’s fine and all that.”
I changed the subject by moving to the newly added photo: an 8 x 10 of Mashburn’s final photo. “It’s better.” I said. “I can make out more features.”
“Still not gonna win the Ansel Adams award.”
“So we’ve got the late Brad Shackleton and the woman Mashburn called Cat, plus this guy,” I tapped the third face in Meridien’s backyard, “who Darnell called Leo the lion.”
Novarro checked her notes. “Actually, Darnell said: ‘lion lion’.”
“Whatever. He also said Leo drew him in.”
“Into his world,” Novarro said. “Whatever that means. He amended it to ‘He lived in the stars. He drew me into the stars’ – meaning Leo did the drawing. Darnell said he lived in the stars whenever he wanted. ‘Leo draws me there’ … meaning into the stars.”
I ambled to the window, looking calm, but with my mind simultaneously re-playing yesterday’s mad conversation with Darnell and analyzing his mental state. He had seemed a bit more lucid for the few seconds that he spoke of Leo and being drawn into the stars. I stared out the window, the sun bright across the buildings, distant mountains looming in all directions.
“Leo draws me into his world … Leo draws me into the stars … I live I the stars whenever I want … I live in the stars when she goes away …”
And from Novarro: “Leo did the drawing.”
Draws, draws, drawing …
I stared into the back of my head, feeling pieces coming together. I have dwelt in the land between the sane and the mad for so long that I sometimes make connections – no, I feel connections in my gut. Mostly they’re wrong, but I’ve solved cases when they were right. I kept staring, feeling my heart begin to beat faster.
“Carson?” Novarro was saying. I turned.
“Uh, what, Tasha?”
“You’ve been gone so long I was about to send in the Saint Bernards.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Thinking.”
“About?”
“A long shot. Let’s go talk to Alyce Mashburn.”
“Reason?”
“To see if we can get her to remove Darnell from his room for a few minutes.”
30
“You want me to get Darnell out of the house?” Alyce Mashburn said, standing at the front door in a blue pantsuit, her hair in curlers. “Ain’t gonna happen. He’s scared to death to get in my old car, says it’s a Tyrannosaurus.”
A dinosaur, I thought. Was that the connection?
“Just out of his room would work, Ms Mashburn,” I said. “Away far enough that he wouldn’t know we were in there.”
She thought a moment. “I might get him outside. He used to enjoy the sun, but now he says he lives in the stars.”
“Could you try, please?” I said. “We’d really like to look through his room. If that’s all right with you, that is.”
&
nbsp; She mulled it over, nodded. “You all go sit quiet in the kitchen. Darnell won’t go back there, says the refrigerator is too loud. When … I mean if, I get him outside, I’ll let the door slam behind me.”
“Thank you, we apprec—”
“Don’t expect much time. Darnell gets antsy after a few minutes, says the sun is eating his skin. He’ll run right back inside.”
Novarro and I retreated to the kitchen. We heard howling from Darnell, foot stomping. A war whoop. We winced as a thrown object thudded into the wall. Another couple of shrieks, but less fierce. More silence.
After ten minutes we heard a padding sound, like feet moving down the carpeted steps. Novarro and I held our breaths.
The door slammed.
We bolted upstairs. Darnell’s room smelled of body odor and food and dead air and I wanted to open the window, to let life flow back inside, but when I peeked past the edge of the window frame I saw a pout-faced Darnell trudging across the yellowed lawn to the filtered shade of a mesquite tree. Alyce Mashburn was talking rapidly, a huge false smile on her face. Darnell looked like all he wanted was to dash back into his hidey-hole.
“We’re looking for a drawing, then?” Novarro said.
I nodded. “We don’t have long.”
I delved into the disarray of the closet, Novarro the desk. I was still rummaging when she moved to the books on the floor, riffling pages.
“Got something, Carson,” Novarro said, excitement in her voice. “Inside the pages of a graphic novel.”
I jumped a pile of clothes and pizza scraps as Novarro held up three sheets of drawing paper. The one on top was a pencil drawing of Darnell Mashburn’s head and shoulders. He was staring directly into the eyes of the artist, which meant he appeared to be staring into my eyes, spooky. The background was a graphic spacescape: stars, a pair of moons, Saturn, or similarly ringed planet. A comet blazed across the top of the sheet.
“Drawn into the stars,” Novarro whispered in awe.
I looked at two more drawings, less detailed. I figured they were studies, the other a final version. They were simple sketches, but wrought by an amateur with a good eye and sense of line.
“Line,” I said.
“Lion?”
“Leo the lion who know his lines. Leo was the line lion, I think.”
“Jesus. It’s like decrypting a code.” She leaned close to the back of the sheet I was holding, then she took it carefully in her fingers and turned it for me to see. There, in pencil, was a tiny name:
Geraldo Trujillo
The artist’s signature? Could we get that lucky?
While Novarro recorded the name in her notes, I stepped to the window to check on Darnell’s progress. No one was out there.
“Darnell!” I heard his aunt yell as the door slammed.
“Out!” I said to Novarro.
Sketches in hand, we turned to the door as it burst open.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!” Mashburn screamed.
“Uh, hi Darnell,” I said, holding his precious drawings. The eyes fell to the sketches.
“THIEF!” he screamed, leaping at me with animal ferocity. I ducked back as he stripped the drawings from my hand. He leapt to his bed clutching the drawings, his eyes wild. “THIEVES! LIARS! MAKE THEM GO AWAY… I WANT THEM TO GO AWAY AND NEVER COME BACK!”
“I think that’s best,” Alyce Mashburn said, looking between us and her broken nephew, shaking with anger and fear, backed into the wall on his own bed in his own room, eyes blazing with a mad fire unlikely to ever be extinguished. “Surely you’ve taken all my poor baby has to give.”
We skulked from the Mashburn residence, behind us the soft sounds of Alyce Mashburn trying to coax her nephew into a less agitated state of mind. Still, every few seconds he punctuated the air with the word “Thieves!”
I took the wheel, pulling away from the Mashburn address, probably for the last time. “Darnell will never talk to us again,” I said. “We’re the enemy forever.”
“I’m amazed at the connections. The line lion. Drawn into the stars. What about Leo? Because of the constellation, you think?”
I gave it a few moments consideration, turning onto a main avenue and gliding into the stream of traffic. “My guess would be Leonard da Vinci. Probably a nickname for the artist.”
“And it seems da Vinci may be one Geraldo Trujillo.” My peripheral vision saw her stare at me, shake her head.
We arrived at PPD HQ, running up the steps to her office. “You had a crazy idea, Carson. But damn … we’ve got a name. I’m gonna try a bit of the Ryder wizardry and check out the name Trujillo in Sedona and the surrounding area.”
“That’s gotta be a hundred miles north of Phoenix, right? Why?”
“Hunch. Darnell said the kid in the pic was hiding inside a red rock. The area around Sedona is known as the ‘red rock’ country because of the color of the – wait for it – rocks.”
“Nice.”
She sat down at her computer and I jogged to the machine for coffee. When I returned she was checking out the screen.
“Four Trujillos in the area, I’m talking maybe a fifty-mile circle including Oak Creek, Cottonwood, Clarkdale, Jerome and a few one-horse hamlets.”
She tried three numbers to no avail, sighed. “OK, last shot. A Hector Trujillo in Cottonwood: Verde Valley. It’s between Sedona and Jerome.”
She dialed, the phone on speaker.
“H’lo?” A female voice, mild Spanish accent.
Novarro leaned over the phone set. “Hello. Is there a Geraldo Trujillo there? And if so, may I speak with him?”
A pause. “Who-who’s calling?”
“This is Detective Tasha Novarro with the Phoenix Police Department. There’s nothing wrong.”
“Nothing wrong?” the voice said, suddenly angry. “There is everything wrong … Geraldo is dead. He died ten days ago.”
The voice fell into ragged sobbing.
We drove north from Phoenix for about an hour, then went up Route 260 into the town of Cottonwood: Verde Valley. The Trujillo residence was a trailer behind a small cinder-block diner not far off the main highway, the sign saying Tru’s Restaurante Mexicano. We were gestured inside by the father, Manuel Trujillo, a slight man with a pronounced stoop, either an early life of unforgiving labor or a deformity. He seemed slightly intoxicated, moving slow and slurring slightly, but I didn’t smell alcohol.
“My esposa,” he said, nodding toward the restaurant, “is working. The lunch rush will start soon and I have to help. She is … not doing well, but we have to work.”
“Just a few questions, sir. How did your Geraldo pass away?”
The dark eyes grew darker and anger shivered in Trujillo’s vocal chords. “A monster killed him. A monster with no conscience. Geraldo was coming home from work in Sedona. He worked at a Centro Médico. He had a car problem and was trying to fix it when … when someone hit him. The Sheriff said it didn’t look like the car even slowed down.”
A sideways glance from Novarro. We’d go from here to the Sheriff’s office and check on the circumstances and any possible suspects.
A frown. “How did you know of Geraldo?” Trujillo asked, squinting like trying to keep us in focus.
Novarro took it. “I can’t go into details except that we were looking at someone who used to be a patient with Dr Meridien. Geraldo was also a patient of hers, correct?”
A long pause, Trujillo wavering slightly on the couch. “Bless her. I have not been able to tell the doctor yet. About … Geraldo.”
This time I shot the glance at Novarro. “When did you last see Dr Meridien?”
“Two weeks ago. It’s hard for us to get to Phoenix, but we go every three weeks. It was a godsend for Geraldo, he felt so alone. Kids made fun of him because he was so smart. But there … she spoke with him. And he was in a small group with others like him. Geraldo found out he could relax inside himself.”
“Do you know who else was in this group?”
A sad smil
e. “I was in Narcotics Anonymous years ago. The kids were like that about the group, anonymous to outsiders. I only knew Geraldo was in a small group. You could tell on group days because he’d seem extra happy after coming home.” A contained sob. “He … almost made it.”
“Pardon?”
“Geraldo was to move to Tempe and go to the university. A scholarship. It would have been this week. Dr Meridien said she’d see him weekly. I think it also meant more group.”
“An art scholarship?”
A moment of perplexation. “Chemistry.”
“Oh … we saw a couple of his drawings and assumed—”
Trujillo waved it away. “A hobby, the art thing. He was going to be a quimíco, a chemist. He loved to draw, especially stars and space ships. But his main love was science. Other boys wanted to do the futbol, beisbol, the sports, but Geraldo wanted to make the experiments in chemistry. One Christmas we saved for months to buy him a chemistry set. He set up his laboratorio in a tiny room in the back of our restaurant and was there for hours at a time, so much that we had to go and order him to come back to the house. As he got older, he felt strange, alone, and just wanted to live in his tiny laboratory. Our doctor recommended Dr Meridien. We went to Phoenix to beg her to look at Geraldo. We didn’t have to beg, she took his case. She has a corazón enorme … a huge heart.”
He broke down crying. It was the kind that knows no comfort and we let ourselves out.
“He was stoned on something,” I said as we walked to the car. “Pushed back into using.”
“I know those people,” Novarro said as we pulled away and studying the rear-view. “They work sixteen hours a day and barely make ends meet. To have a child with a chance of escaping the cycle is almost magical. Then, in the span of a few moments …”
“I know,” I said, looking into beautiful, desolate mountains. “I know.” It was all there was to say.
The County Sheriff was Walter Hart, a solid man in his fifties with the kind of tan that comes from living in the sun for decades. He had round glasses and big teeth and reminded me of Teddy Roosevelt.
“Geraldo was coming home from work,” Hart said, shifting in the chair behind his desk. “He was employed at the Valley Verde Medical Center in Sedona. He worked in the lab, a kind of gopher-slash-intern.”